In 2010, someone near and dear to me took a giant political leap and ran for Congress in a district where no other Democrat was running. When the polls closed on election day, we were eager to see how many votes he received [knowing, of course, that the Republican would win.] We saw the results as they were reported on local tv, but...
we never officially heard from the Secretary of State, or the Board of Elections, or anyone. Sure, we could go on-line to the Secretary of State's office to see the totals. Or just read the daily newspaper. [A resource that--at least around here--we discovered to be woefully unreliable: On the morning after the 2010 election, it reported that the Republican had retained his seat--unopposed.]
It seems a very curious and incomplete process: Wouldn't you expect, as a candidate, to receive some kind of notification from the election authority, giving you the vote counts and declaring, officially, that you were the winner or loser?
Is that too much to ask?
The same thing happened to another candidate--in the same district--just this month in this year's primary. He lost by 43 votes, but he, too, never received an official notification of his loss. Some of us have been thinking that, a candidate, lacking a document stating that he/she was the loser, might try showing up in Washington--or the state capital--occupying an office, and simply saying that, "Nobody told me."
So, I'm wondering if my state--Missouri--is the only one with this half-assed way of operating. Am I being silly, expecting the Secretary of State to get back to the candidates? Or is this the way it is everywhere?